


Personal Notes (38) What is freedom anyway?

by longhairshortfuse



Series: Carlos's Secret Diary [38]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Depression, Emotions, Fluff, M/M, spoilers for "Numbers"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-06
Updated: 2014-07-07
Packaged: 2018-02-07 17:26:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1907559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/longhairshortfuse/pseuds/longhairshortfuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos finds a way to let Cecil know how he feels, and there's something strange happening at the big transmitter tower with the secret bunker underneath.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Breathe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carlos struggles to talk about the effects of his illness, but finds another way to communicate.

Over the last week or so I have visited the lab only when necessary, when I wanted to borrow equipment. The team knows me well enough that they recognise that "gardening leave" does not mean that I will stop being a scientist. I have seen Ell most days, she stops by to check on me if I don't go to the lab. This makes me feel guilty because I do not feel like I am sick. I told her I could return to my usual back-shift but she said I was officially signed off for another month and muttered _you have no idea what we had to go through to get the paperwork authenticated_ so I did not push the issue. She tells me about the team whether I remember to ask or not. She seems to be happy with Gio, says they had a chat about their expectations from a relationship. Apparently he is ok about _sleeping_ with his boss but they have kept their separate apartments. For when he gets bored, Ell added.

Leah has gone. Ell said back to Chicago, not a team player blah blah blah. I warned Cecil that Tamika might have been seen at the silo with me but he said no, her Scouts (whom she adopted after Earl Harlan's unfortunate removal) and Militia keep a secure perimeter. Leah was fishing for information, nothing more. It gave me something to obsess about from 2am until dawn some mornings. Other mornings I lay awake worrying about issues from _Cecil will leave me because I'm not good enough for him_ to _we're out of both WD40 and gaffer tape, how will I mend anything?_ Cecil has told me to wake him if I'm stressing in the early hours, but I just can't. I won't. I don't want him to know, I don't want to be a burden.

I have good days and bad days, good moments and bad moments. I want to be better, useful. I know the neuroscience yet I still tell myself I should _snap out of it, pull yourself together_ on days when I can't bear to leave the bedroom, can't tolerate light and sound, trapped in a head full of cotton wool and thorns. It is so frustrating! Cecil is very understanding and I feel bad about it. I am distracted, tired, snappy, demanding, teary and remorseful. I see the look on his face, pity or the look that says _you're being an asshole but I'll let it slide because it's your illness talking._ Shit, Cecil, you never promised me in sickness and in health so I would understand if you left. Please stay. We have never promised each other anything. Nothing is a promise, I told you once, everything is some level of probability. Sometimes I am an asshole and that is just who I am.

I can't talk about it. I think Cecil wants me to talk more about my feelings although he is kind enough not to ask. If I try, it feels like my brain and my mouth are not connected, words won't form and I feel panic descend. Most of the time I swing between panic, fear, despair, anger, numbness. All the most basic survival emotions. Numb is a welcome relief. Two things help: physical activity like running or building and physical contact from Cecil. Three things. The Whispering Forest has a strange effect that is disconcerting but not entirely unwelcome. I hope Cecil does not think that I have stopped loving him. I don't respond to physical closeness as easily as I used to, as easily as he still does. I worry that he will get tired of this. I like to snuggle up with him on the sofa and read undemanding pulp in a calm, soothing silence. I like to close my eyes and listen to his voice as he tells me about his day. I like to watch his face as he reads and guess the plot from his expression. I would like to touch Cecil in the ways he likes without making him feel bad about not returning the favour.

Ell says I could be like this for months, to expect slow and uneven recovery, to look for one positive thing in everything that I do. She says look for beautiful things and focus on them for a while, maybe the sweep of the horizon in the sand wastes or the colour of the sky or a well written spreadsheet, or a taste or a smell. She brings me tasks I can do that are useful but inconsequential, like reorganising rotas and analysing data from old projects abandoned due to lack of resources. She says that if we can show progress and close some old files we might be in a stronger position for more funding. I am currently analysing data on the spectra of light observed at different locations, especially around the dog park and the house that does not exist. It is a little different from our usual sunlight, blueshifted as if something, a light source, was approaching fast.

I will stop writing in a moment (writing things down helps too, although often I write then delete soon after) and give my diary to Cecil. I do not know how else to tell him how fucked up I feel. I am not good at talking about emotions. Cecil says I am getting better at it, but it makes me uncomfortable. These emotions are not rational and have no link to reality. Like all emotional states they are a product of brain chemistry and when brain chemistry is disrupted the resulting emotions are confusing and untrustworthy. When I am riding the mood-swing rollercoaster I struggle to stay grounded, to remember that it will pass, all I have to do is breathe and wait. The only emotion I trust right now is the love I feel for Cecil.

\---------------------------

I went into Cecil's study and left my laptop open by the side of his desk with my diary loaded as far as the security page and my password on a sticky note. He did the eyebrow-waggle-lip-bite thing that I know means "are you sure?" and I nodded. I left him to read it if he wanted and went for a run. When I got back he did not say anything about it, but he joined me in the shower and asked me to do something we have both avoided mentioning since our last trip into the forest. Later, he asked if it really helped. I replied yes, I want to make you happy, I want to hear you cry out the first syllable of my name but whisper the second, I want to see that expression of pure joy on your face and know that I put it there. He kissed me and said he had made me something, took my hand and led me to his study. He presented me with a pocket-sized card, beautifully decorated with scientific glassware and gerbera flowers, with a calligraphy inscription that said, "breathe and wait, I love you, C" next to a drawing of a microphone. I held him tightly, tears silently falling, breathing and waiting.


	2. Fey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carlos has an idea, but needs Cecil to do something he doesn't like to make it work.

My personal project is progressing. Building the rig that will hold my temporal loop generator was an entirely physical project. It was hard work, physical labour that left me dusty and exhausted each time I went, which was whenever I could face leaving home. The militia cleared my work area, fixed up the generator and delivered some of the materials I needed, the rest I gathered from a range of sources who accepted "Oh it's for Science" without question. I never saw any of the militia. We communicated by trading supplies. I only identified one visitor to the silo because of the wheel tracks in the sandy floor. I told Cecil and he... swelled. Then fretted. Then grabbed his phone and left the room. I could almost hear his half of the conversation, but I must have misheard because he only knows one Steve and there's no way he would call him up. I found him later researching the availability of sports-adapted wheelchairs. Easier to control on rough terrain, he said.

A couple of days ago my trip to the silo was for the last physically demanding build session before the fiddly, delicate operation of assembling the electronic equipment, power structure and extensive cooling system around the stainless steel, glass-portholed chamber that would safely contain the generated temporal loop anomaly. The chamber connected to both a rotary pump and a vapour diffusion pump to evacuate it and I hoped the desert air would be dry enough that ventilating the operations room thoroughly would be enough to remove most of the water vapour evaporating from this too-organic part of the system. I did not want to have to build my own liquid nitrogen plant so that I could condense the moisture from the apparatus. I stood back and looked at it, glinting in the low lights from the backup generator. It was an unfinished, imperfect beauty.

I made a list of all the tasks I still had to complete. It was a long list. Getting the right electrical and optical components was not a problem. Neither was making the circuit boards, I looked forward to spending time designing and soldering and testing the boards I could not buy off the shelf or scavenge from defunct lab equipment. The technology would be a few years out of date but I knew it worked. I had seen it and lived.

The biggest problem was going to be obtaining and controlling power supplies. I needed separate and reliable input power for the vacuum pumps, coolant pump, reference timing circuitry (that was going to be difficult here), anomaly sensor array, generator and stabiliser. Some needed mains voltage alternating, others needed steady and stable low voltage direct. I could control everything from my laptop on battery power if necessary and I briefly considered enlisting Aleck's help to write a control app for my phone if I could interface all the electronics to my spare mobile. The backup generator barely ran the lighting and was inadequate for anything technical or anything that wouldn't survive a power cut. 

Ideally I needed some kind of sentient computer program, one that could monitor all the input power rails, all the sensor data and adjust power settings for stability without having to follow a set of fixed subroutines. One that was not limited by my imagination, one that could cope with circumstances that I could not predict and prepare for. My programming experience is decades out of date and not up to the job at all. I would have to recruit Aleck despite my unwillingness to endanger him.

Except that when I listened to Cecil's show I realised that there was an alternative. I called Cecil when he was on air, I texted him first to say he had to answer my call but just listen, say nothing to his listeners about what I was going to ask him to do, and forgive me for asking him to do something he had never done by choice before as far as I am aware. I needed Cecil to lie to his listeners. 

When I called, Cecil switched the broadcast signal over to the local numbers station and a clear, bright voice rang out, full of possibilities and hope and wishes. I told him what I wanted him to do and he agreed after a moment of silence. He said he might need help. I was too far away to get there in time. I stifled my misgivings and called Aleck, told him to go to the transmitter bunker off Oxford with the largest capacity blank external drive he had, a spare lab laptop, his emergency connector kit and as much optical fibre as he could load in the Hilux. I said I would explain later but go help Cecil now. 

They told me the story together afterwards, in the early hours long after Cecil's show ended and we all sat in the silo operations room giddy with success. Cecil and Aleck broke into the bunker. Fey was there, singing and chatting about all the things she wanted to do with her freedom. Aleck and Cecil explained how she could be free at a price, if she was willing she would be housed in a hard drive until we got her uploaded into a computer in the silo and got her an internet connection. Once that was done, she could have the freedom of the internet and a safe home behind a firewall in the control centre for my temporal loop generator. She would be confined for the few hours it would take Aleck and Cecil to lay fibre optic cable between the ops room and the nearest reliable but unsuspicious wifi hotspot. During this time I would stay with Fey, talk to her and teach her about temporal anomalies while I adapted one of the lab laptops to connect to the largest capacity battery I could fabricate from spares in case of generator failure. 

All she had to do was consent to be transferred to Aleck's drive and leave behind only a copy of her voice. Fey is safe. Fey is free. If your computer starts singing at you unexpectedly or you get a really strange anon ask on tumblr or your music gets stuck on repeat for that one particular song that you did not even know you hd downloaded, that might be Fey having fun as you pass the college and temporarily connect to the campus network. When we uploaded Fey into the laptop, she projected a human-tiger face onto the screen and smiled. It was not a comfortable sight. She said she was going to explore and the screen went blank then flashed two words: back soon. In our elation we shared a group hug but agreed that it was weird and we wouldn't do it again.

Of course now that she is free we have no way of making her keep her side of the bargain, but somehow that matters less than I thought it would. We could not risk anyone knowing that Fey is free, Cecil understood that and accepted it although he was very unhappy about lying so convincingly to his listeners. He wanted to shout it out that he had rescued Fey, but for her safety and ours that was not advisable. Aleck showed enthusiastic support for the whole project at the silo and asked to be involved more. I felt conflicted, I could use his skills but I also see the ops room as my refuge. Sometimes when I tell Cecil I want to work I come out and just sit in the dark silence and wait until I feel better.

I left a note for the militia to ask if they could find the most suitable electricity substation that I could drain power from without drawing too much attention to it, and could they obtain any large diameter three core cable without risking themselves. I put the note in the supply bag I had brought that also contained the usual first aid and hygiene products along with the bungee cords they had asked for, and a selection of chocolate bars that they had not requested but always thanked me for.

Cecil and I took my car and headed east. Aleck took the Hilux with instructions to head off road until he was sure that he was not being tracked. We were both exhausted when we got home, lurched into a quick shared shower and into bed. I slept for the remainder of the night and part of the morning without waking.

Over a late breakfast that was really lunch, Cecil reminded me that I had once expressed an opinion that consciousness was the product of biological processes in the brain. He asked if I still thought the same way. He did not mention Fey, we know the house is not secure. I said that I was less sure than I had been but that human-made artificial intelligence would be impossible to distinguish from human intelligence. We would create an intelligence that reflected our own, we could not do other. I asked Cecil how or if he knew for sure that I was a conscious human and not a computer programme designed to feign consciousness. He said he didn't care, he'd love me anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Numbers" made me sad. I wanted Fey to be free.


	3. A different desert

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carlos wonders where Dana is and gets all philosophical about space and time. Again.

There is one large part of _The Day We Freed Fey_ that Cecil and I avoided talking about for a few days, until he was ready. Dana. I told him a couple of weeks ago, after his previous show, that Dana was able to affect the carrier radio waves and transmit her own message that he could not hear from within the studio. His own recording of that show came directly from his microphone therefore Dana’s voice was absent. there was another voice though, we both recognised it at once but could not remember a single thing about what it said after the recording finished. We played it again, and again we knew the voice. Again we did not remember what it said. I kept the tape for audio frequency analysis and voice pattern recognition but every time I go to the lab I forget to load the track.

Thanks to the additional components Cecil persuaded Ell to install in my car radio and the lab radio (which I have kept) the radio automatically starts playing Cecil’s most recent show whenever I switch it on. I could play Dana’s message to Cecil at home. It upset him, and for once it was I who was the supportive partner, telling him that Dana was safe, as safe as she could be, and being afraid was a sensible, potentially life-saving state of mind.

Dana has been in touch with Cecil regularly by email and text. I am fascinated by her descriptions of her location. She described being stuck in a geographical loop, always walking away yet always returning to the same point. I considered the ways this could happen. Technically we live on a geographical loop. If it was possible to walk, run, swim in what we think is a straight line, eventually we would circumnavigate our planet and end up back where we started. And we are time-machines, relentlessly marching forward until our supply runs out. We do not perceive that our geometry is not based on a plane surface. If you walk north for long enough you find you are going south. Cecil pointed out that if you walked west you would never find yourself walking east, just west forever. I tried to explain about latitude and longitude and maps but his eyes glazed over and he asked me about whether it was sadder that lines of latitude never met each other at all and must be used to the loneliness, or that lines of longitude only crowd together twice and must miss each other terribly in between. I made him a Mobius band and watched him play with it for a few moments, alternately frowning and smiling as he figured it out. Later at the lab I made him a Klein bottle out of some spare glass tubing and left it on his desk. Hot glass looks exactly the same as cold glass. Even with help this scientist is not always as careful as he needs to be.

Dana figured it out. She had to walk at a tangent to the object she was trying to get away from and yet kept approaching so that she trekked out a clockwise perimeter around it. Cecil was concerned about her. She said she had been walking for so long, months, possibly longer than the time since she entered the dog park. Time seems to run differently where she is. Dana claims that she can see Night Vale if she moves her head just a little to the left, but she cannot be seen. This would give me something to ponder scientifically when I had nothing else to think about, but it seemed so unlikely that I gave it little further thought.

I concentrated on temporal loops for a while. With the correct conditions it should be possible, according to the calculations in my notebook that the Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives Just About Everywhere adjusted, to set off in one direction, travel and end up back in the same place but in a different time frame. A combined topographical and temporal loop . Could Dana's desert and mountain and lighthouse be part of such an exotic phenomenon? As she walks is she travelling faster through time? I wish I could investigate, I have so many questions. But the chances of anything organic surviving a trip through such a wormhole are infinitesimally small. I plan to generate something much more modest in range and dimension. My initial target is to send a small sphere of lead forward in time by a few seconds. I would see it flick out of my old time frame then appear in my new time frame. If all physical instants are superimposed, separated into past, present and future only by our flawed and limited perception, this should be possible given enough of the right kind of energy. The kind of energy hinted at by my measurements at the submarine a few weeks ago.

I plan to build up the mass and complexity until I can send a clock through a generated temporal loop, but the only reliable timepiece in this area lives around Cecil’s wrist and I am not going to ask for it back. I am conducting a scientific investigation into hourglass style timers to find out if one can be made precise enough to allow valid measurements of the generated temporal loop, but that is in the future. Or the superimposed instants that I may live to perceive as my present when my consciousness allows it.


End file.
